Liz Axford

At the heart of my work is a sense of contradiction. I consider freedom and constraint, order and disorder, the overt and the hidden, the clear and the obfuscated, and work to find resolutions of these conflicting forces.

I began making quilts in 1985, the same year I took a leave of absence from the practice of architecture. To my surprise, textiles satisfied my design instincts and my love of process in a way that commercial architecture no longer did. My leave of absence became permanent.

While initially attracted to quilts for their clear graphic qualities, I have found a multitude of ways to modulate that clarity: irregular piecing; hand-dyeing (often with mechanical resists); laminated felt; dye painting, printing and over-printing. Thirty years later, combinations of these processes continue to engage me.